


A Room to Call Home

by webcricket



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Humor, Reunions, Soulmates, castielxangel!reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 03:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12027402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/webcricket/pseuds/webcricket
Summary: An old friend seeks out Castiel on an errand to summon him home. Gender neutral reader. Humor and fluff with a suggestion of plot and a side of bacon (because everything is better with bacon).





	A Room to Call Home

Castiel roughly engaged the hand brake of the rickety borrowed brown truck as it lurched to a grinding halt. The metallic ting of the radiator reminded the angel he wanted to ask Dean to investigate that noise, along with the irksome vibration and strange burning smell recently emanating from the clutch. He distractedly traced the calloused pads of his fingertips along the worn curve of the steering wheel – although a slow and inefficient method of travel, he had come to enjoy the uninterrupted stretches of meditative solitude and passing minutia of detail driving afforded.

He might otherwise have winged right past the roadside attraction that purported to be the _World’s Largest Ball of Twine_ without having paused for a few contemplative hours to unravel its significance. Likewise, the alleged birthplace of the _Which came first, the chicken or the egg?_ controversy, along with the quaint one-room museum dedicated to the conundrum that boastingly housed the actual chair where the originator perched while hatching this riddle for the ages, would have gone entirely unnoticed by him. The answer, he determined, and sincerely attempted to explain to the wide-eyed gum-chewing teenaged museum curator, was that neither the chicken or the egg came first. After all, he reasoned, in the beginning, the very first of firsts, there was only light. Then eventually there was the slimy scaly flopping fish-like things that crawled from the oceans and after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution developed feathers. Chickens and eggs, as humanity knows them, and in no particular order, were no more than an afterthought. Mostly he wondered if the original owner of the ramshackle truck still missed it and wanted it back, albeit a little worse for the wear.

“Why have we stopped?” you interrupted his quiet reflection from your position in the passenger seat, squinting through the windshield at the ugly and dilapidated industrial building looming beyond the hazy glass.

Glancing sidelong at you, he inclined his unshaven chin out the cracked window toward the unremarkable iron door, pitted cement stairs, and decrepit railing marking the entrance to the Men of Letters bunker, answering simply, “We’ve arrived.”

When Castiel embarked on the short jaunt to the Gas-N-Sip earlier in the evening to pick up a few supplies for the bunker, you were the last entity in creation he expected to run into, or rather, nearly run over, in the parking lot. Fortunately, the brakes on the truck were the only part of the clunker not actively disintegrating – not that hitting an angel with a sluggishly lumbering vehicle will do much more than cause, at worst, temporary inconvenience to said angel.

Although it was your first time occupying a human vessel, having spent the dreadful fall instigated by Metatron circling in search of and never finding a suitable one, you were well aware it was considered ill-advised to loiter in the middle of a poorly lit parking lot after dusk. Unfortunately, this was also the precise location your vessel, chosen especially for proximity to the angel you sought, said _yes_.

In days long past, you and the seraph were fledglings who stretched your wings and tested the limits of your divine grace together in Joshua’s garden. Upon your creation, both of you were bursting with an innate inquisitiveness atypical of angels – a trait that set you squarely apart from your kin and brought you that much closer in mutual fondness. You disobediently ventured time and again into the endless corridors of Heaven, spending unmarked intervals exploring and marveling at the myriad of eternities tailored to the fortunate human souls dwelling behind closed doors. Each door contained a room of their very own for the soul to call home – a place to hold the assorted odds and ends of a life with every object, moment, and memory that was meaningful to them preserved. And sometimes souls kept one another in perpetuity. It was these doors behind which two souls stowed the sum of their existence together in everlasting contentment that captivated you most of all. If angels were capable of envy, you would have suffered the sin.

When your assignments separated you – Castiel dispatched to Anna’s garrison to join rank, his boldness tethered to the duties of a soldier, and you relegated to Heaven’s bureaucracy, curiosity neatly contained in a stuffy four-by-four-foot cubicle – you drew from his angelic lips a parting oath, bound by an unheard of mingling of grace, that one day you would be together again. Angels didn’t love one another, not like humans, but the bond of fidelity you and he forged in Heaven was comparable.

Watching you shield your eyes from the flickering headlights of the truck in the convenience store parking lot and wave in recognition, Castiel presumed you could have appeared in his life now for only one reason – that _one day_ , foretold by your pact to each other, had fatefully arrived. Motioning for you to climb into the truck, fearing for your safety in thinking you had rebelled and others would come searching for you, he spun the rubber of the already bald tires and drove straight back to the bunker.

He had no idea where to begin a conversation with the unfathomable distance of time separating your lives, and so he didn’t. Like a human defaulting to commenting about the weather to fill the silence, he elected, instead, to relay a nervous narrative of the passing scenery. The brief journey, inconsequentially protracted owing to hitting two red lights, was replete with a prattling non-stop, occasionally nonsensical, accounting of every lost dog, wandering child, kissing couple, feeble retiree, and blowing leaf he’d ever seen or helped cross the deserted streets in that part of town, and it bought him just over 17 minutes of delaying the inevitable discussion about what brought you to Kansas.

“This is where you live?” you asked, dismayed as you scanned the derelict entrance. “So many beautiful places exist in our father’s creation, and you choose to reside in ruination?” The Castiel you remembered favored verdant grasses and wide-open expanses of blue sky. It seemed to you, seeing first-hand how far he’d fallen, that your mission to bring him home to Heaven was, perhaps, as necessary as your superiors intimated it to be.

“It’s a fully equipped bunker, and you’ll find it’s quite homey inside,” he uttered confidently.

“Home?!” you scoffed. They said he’d become vehemently attached to this place, but to refer to it as home was too much.

His proud countenance fell at perceiving your disapproval.

An unfamiliar rush of emotion, bleed through courtesy of the human soul you presently shared your vessel with, seized hold of your frame upon seeing the wounding impact of your tone on his demeanor. You were not here to make him feel badly about his choices, merely to ask that he strongly reconsider them. Unfolding the foreign feeling hands resting upon your lap, this same unknown impulse compelled you to reach out to lightly stroke his knee. The edge in your voice dulled, “Castiel, our home is in Heaven.”

“I’m not wanted there, nor do I belong anymore,” he stated pointedly, beginning to doubt your actual motive for visiting. Eyes lowering, he noticed your hesitant hand and fondly clasped the broad warmth of his palm around your fingers. He dismissed the suspicious inkling, hoping he was wrong. “Regardless of that, I’m very glad to see you.”

Angelic grace funneled into the bounds of a diminutive human vessel – a situation akin to the power of a blizzard contained within a solitary snowflake – this tender contact proved intensely overwhelming for you. You recoiled with an astonished gasp to gape at your explosively heated fingers.

Your reaction prompted a fleeting amused half-smile to tug at his mouth at the recollection of when all this was new to him too – the slightest touch of skin that was then a dizzying assault upon the senses now an agreeable way to communicate those affectionate sentiments which cannot fully be articulated with words. Castiel greatly looked forward to sharing with you all that he had learned about and from humanity. He believed you alone amongst all angels would appreciate and love humanity as much as he did; as you alone had understood him long ago in Heaven.

“I’m glad to see you too,” a genuine smile ghosted your lips, and faltered as you reiterated the canned lines you’d been directed to say to him in order to sway his mind on the matter, “as many in Heaven will be who will welcome your return with open arms. Others will follow by example. You are not so shunned by your family as you lead yourself to believe.” The statement was truthful. With Joshua gone, and Heaven spiraling once more into chaos, the angels desperately needed a leader – a loyal figurehead with history, however rebellious, to guide them. You had come willingly, eager to see your old confidant, though also under orders – your betters taking advantage of your unusually intimate friendship with Castiel which they did not possess the capacity to comprehend – to seek him out and solicit his aid.

Your words, which Castiel easily discerned were not really yours, confirmed his suspicions as to the aim of your unexpected visit. “That’s kind of you to say,” he frowned, a grim furrow dividing his brow. He resented the fact that they sent you – you, whose bond meant so much to him and whom he could not deny. Weary of assuming the burden of Heaven’s problems, he added tersely, “But my home is here now.” He shouldered open the groaning truck door.

“With humanity? They can’t even begin to comprehend your true purpose,” you argued after him across the seat.

“It is living among them where I have discovered my true purpose,” he countered irritably, slamming the door shut. He was not angry with you. He wondered what punishment they had threatened you with to coerce your cooperation.

You huffed, heaving open the sticky passenger side door and jumping out to scramble in the wake of his billowing trench coat, retorting, “And what about your family? Here, you are isolated, cut off from Heaven.”

He halted in front of the bunker door, pivoting to confront you. “I am not alone here. The Winchesters are good men. I consider them my brothers,” his blue eyes shone with deep conviction.

You inhaled sharply, stealing your resolve to make the one appeal you knew he could not refuse, to recall to him that age-old promise he swore to you upon his angelic essence – that tiny fragment of his grace that now stirred tempestuously in your celestial heart. You believed you were doing the right thing, for Heaven, for him, “Castiel…”

“Y/N, I know why you’re here. What you’re trying to do. What they’re trying to do,” he averted his indignant gaze upward. Stormy features relaxing in a sullen droop, his regard drifted back to you. “And if you ask me to return to Heaven with you this very moment, I will not hesitate. You alone can induce me to do so,” he had not forgotten his pledge. “But before you say the words, I want you to understand what it is you’re asking me to leave.”

You would not selfishly deny his modest request. “Show me,” you nodded accord. Heaven could wait; you’d waited this long.

He swung the bunker door wide and politely signaled for you to enter ahead of him.

“Hey buddy, did they have to brew and bottle the beer before they could sell it to you, or what?” Dean raised his gruff voice in the general direction of the stairs without looking up upon hearing Cas’ resounding footsteps on the landing. He thought up what he considered to be a humorous remark that morning while noshing on perfectly crisped bacon, and even though Cas hadn’t been gone any longer than usual, Dean had been waiting all day to say those exact words. The delivery fell bitterly flat for his taste. He wished he had more of that delicious bacon.

Stretching long arms overhead and yawning, Sam peeked up from the book he had balanced between his thighs and the edge of the map table to acknowledge Cas’ entrance and saw that the angel had not returned alone. Harshly clearing his throat, he snapped the book closed and slid the hefty tome hard across the table at Dean.

“What the hell?” Dean whined, shooting his brother an annoyed scowl when the corner of the text struck him directly in the ribs. He rubbed a small circle over the area, begging sympathy for the anticipated bruise.

Sam unsympathetically and emphatically vaulted an eyebrow and rose to his feet.

Dean finally took notice of you clambering down the stairs and begrudgingly stood. He muttered out the side of his mouth at his brother, “Sammy, I told you something like this would happen if we sent him without a shopping list again.”

“You said he’d bring home a stray kitten, not a…” Sam murmured through clenched teeth.

“You do realize I can hear you?” Cas narrowed his eyes and glowered at the brothers as he approached the table.

Dean shrugged unapologetically.

“And if you recall, I found an upstanding young family to adopt that orphan puppy I brought home last week,” Cas added matter-of-factly.

“Not before it peed in my shoe,” Dean griped. “Twice.”

Sam jabbed Dean with an elbow to shut him up.

Cas gave Sam a small appreciative smile for the considerately restraining measure, “Sam, Dean, I’d like you to meet Y/N, a very old friend of mine.”

You tarried a few steps behind, preoccupied by the intriguing maze of corridors breaking off from the cement walls of the expansive room. Though dark and dingy, they brought to mind Heaven’s gleaming white halls and all the marvelous doors therein.

Cas glanced back at you, beckoning you forward, “Y/N, this is…”

“The righteous man, and the abomination,” you interposed, curtly bobbing your head at each of the men in greeting, “who else?”

“I thought we were past the whole abomination business?” Sam frowned at Cas.

“I didn’t refer to him as that,” Cas shot you a reproaching glare, expression tempering earnestly when he focused on Sam, “I didn’t refer to you as that.”

“You thought it,” you announced objectively.

Dean smirked to himself, figuring you must be an angel. Your tactless honesty was a dead giveaway.

“I consider it more of a term of endearment nowadays,” Cas offered repentantly.

“Seriously?!” Sam feigned outrage even though he was not truly offended. “And how does he get to be the righteous man after the whole demonic stint?” he leered at Dean.

“Easy, cause my answer to Y/N is an enthusiastic yes,” Dean’s grin smugly widened to crease the corners of his glittering green eyes. Teasing guileless angels was one of his favorite pastimes, and it was getting more challenging to provoke Cas the longer the angel lived with them. He was all in favor of fresh angelic fodder. And bacon.

“I didn’t ask you anything,” you pointed out, head tilting in bafflement.

“You didn’t have to,” Dean winked suggestively. “Answer’s still yes.”

Cas rolled his brilliant blue eyes toward the high ceiling – this introduction was not going at all as he had intended. You were acting with brazen impudence and Dean was, well, being Dean. “They grow on you,” he attempted to mollify the situation.

“Under certain conditions, so does fungus,” you advised calmly.

Sam stifled a snicker with his sleeve.

Dean didn’t miss a beat, sauntering forward with his arms spread wide, he lewdly noted, “They don’t make a cream for this, sweetheart, but I’d be happy to help you scratch that itch.” Speaking of itches, his stomach growled hungrily. He decided just then a bacon cheeseburger from that diner on the corner of Monroe Ave and Main would be precisely the thing to pacify it.

Eyes clouding in confusion, you commented aloud on the relentless borderline obsessive theme pervading Dean’s mind since you’d entered the bunker, “What do fried slices of pig fat have to do with anything?”

Sam bent at the waist, breaking under a rolling wave of laughter.

Cas groaned exasperatedly and closed his eyes.

“Hey,” Dean wagged a warning finger at you, “head space is strictly off limits. And bacon? Since you asked so nicely, everything.”

“I don’t understand,” you looked to the visibly frustrated Castiel for an answer.

“My friends frown upon having their thoughts perceived,” he sighed.

“But…” you still didn’t understand about the bacon.

“Alright, enough!” Sam entreated, composing himself, ever the peacemaker. “Dean, you keep it in your pants. And Y/N, please stay out of our heads. Trust me, he only gets worse the deeper you probe.”

“He’s right, and yeah, strict no probing policy,” Dean agreed, needlessly clarifying. “By angels or aliens.”

You mutely wondered what Dean kept in his pants, and if it was, perchance, a preserved pork product.

“Any friend of Cas is a friend of ours. Right Dean?” Sam stared sternly at his brother, the firm set of his jaw suggesting there was only one correct answer and that Dean had better choose it.

“Right. He’s right again,” Dean mumbled contritely.

“Good,” Sam plastered a friendly smile on his face. “Now since we started off on the wrong foot…”

You looked skeptically down at your vessel’s left foot, shifting weight to the opposite one.

Castiel couldn’t help but crack a small smile at your misperception.

“…it’s a pleasure to meet you, Y/N,” Sam extended an open hand.

You reached out to awkwardly take it.

“Well, I’m sure you two have a lot of catching up to do,” Dean grabbed his folded jacket off the chair, tummy rumbling loudly, and jostled Sam by the collar. “We’ll leave you to it. Come on Sam.”

“Uh, yeah.” Sam let go of your hand, looked around urgently for his coat, patted his chest, realized he was currently wearing it, and smiled self-consciously, “Okay then. See you guys later.”

You said nothing.

Cas took this to mean you had not altered your intent to recall him to Heaven. He watched the brothers mount the stairs, gravelly voice resounding wistfully after them, “Dean. Sam. Goodbye.”

Grabbing the door latch, Dean responded lightheartedly as he yanked it open, “Sheesh Cas, we’re only going out to grab a bite to eat.” It wasn’t like he and Sam would never see the angel again. The door clanged shut behind them.

Cas’ shoulders slumped.

“You’ve changed Castiel,” you casually observed. Despite the coarse interaction, you sensed his profound love for and attachment to these men, and their equal love for him. A part of you seethed with a jealousy you were not supposed to feel. Yet you also experienced gladness for him. The rapid conflicting pulls of these emotions dazed you. You wondered how Castiel tolerated it day after day without suffering restlessness. He appeared comfortable and at ease in this strange place.

“You disapprove,” he refused to look at you, plunging aside into one of the corridors.

“No,” you ambled after him, “I meant it as a compliment. It suits you, this change. You seem…somehow more assured of yourself.” You glanced at each of the lettered or numbered doors as you strode by, rounding a corner, “Where are you going?”

“My room,” Cas halted in front of a closed door. “If I’m to leave, there’s something here I want to bring with me.” He twisted the knob and marched across the threshold into the humble space.

Frozen in the doorway, you ran your fingertips deferentially across the level wooden plane of the doorframe. His room. _His_. A room of his own to call home like those lucky souls in Heaven. Your eyes wandered over the tidy contents of the room – the crisp sheets and blanket neatly darted beneath the corners of the totally unnecessary bed. The smart assortment of ties draped fastidiously over a hanger on the closet door, gifts from his vessel’s daughter which he never wore but cherished nonetheless because of how important they were to her. A dried bunch of faded yellow wildflowers tacked above the desk, picked that Spring for him by a homeless woman named Elise he had gotten into the habit of treating to lunch when he and the Winchesters were not out of town on case. She knew the names and histories of every bird and flower in creation and the angel never tired of hearing her relate their stories. Hung beside the flowers, a brightly colored crayon portrait of a blue-eyed angel with unbroken black wings, the grateful artwork of a child whose ailing mother he cured of cancer without cosmic repercussions on a point of technicality to the great vexation of a waiting reaper. On the desk itself lay the bulky hand-me-down laptop given to him by Sam, which the angel used to watch Netflix in the wee hours of the morning so as not to disturb the sleeping brothers. And over the bed, Dean’s capricious contribution to the barren walls, a poster of an adorable fluffy orange tiger kitten dangling precipitously from a tree branch with the affirmation to _Hang in There_ written in fanciful script along the top and punctuated by an exclamation point for added emphasis. It perturbed Dean to no end that Cas left the poster up, the angel asserting, although he knew it was obviously meant as a cheesy joke on Dean’s part, that it was one of the most heartwarming gifts he’d ever received and would display it reverentially for all time.

Castiel plucked a picture frame from the otherwise unused dresser, flipping it over in his hands to carefully remove the photo inside – a copy of the snapshot Bobby Singer had insisted they pose for, with Jo and Ellen, before that fateful confrontation with Lucifer so many years ago. Standing stiffly on the perimeter of that group of extraordinarily brave souls, he recalled it was the first time in his existence he had truly felt like he had clarity of purpose. He tucked the sentimental photo securely in his trench coat pocket lest, wits and purpose muddled by Heavenly muck, he forget. When he turned around, you were gone.

He found you sitting, having taken a wrong turn trying to find the exit, on the dimly lit staircase of the garage.

He eased onto the step beside you, crossing his arms over his knees and staring at the uninteresting vacant cement block wall opposite which held your rapt attention. After a long silence, he spoke his concern, “Y/N, what’s wrong?”

You sighed glumly, “It’s nothing. Don’t worry Castiel, I understand…this place is your home. Sam and Dean, they are your family. I won’t ask you to leave with me. There is nothing in Heaven for you. Seeing you here, I’m not sure there ever was.”

“There is one thing,” he resisted the yearning to grasp your hand, to convey his full meaning with the simple gesture. He feared startling you with the raw emotion behind it. “There only ever was one thing.”

“What’s that?” you peered keenly into his vessel’s blue eyes, the luminous sapphire hue was almost as stunning as the radiant glow of his true form.

He cocked his head, a questioning smile curling his lip, “You really don’t know?”

You shook your head.

He conceded to the desire to touch you, reaching out to gently caress your inquisitively illumined face. Sweeping his thumb tenderly across your cheek, he whispered huskily, “It’s you.”

You did not shy from his outpouring of affection. Eyelids fluttering shut, you leaned into the warmth of his palm and clasped your hand over his. You never imagined your one day with Castiel would dawn beyond the horizons of Heaven. You certainly never dared to dream two angels would have a room of their own to call home amongst humanity – a place together to share, and learn, and grow, and love, forever. You never knew angels weren’t made to love one another, not like humans, but you and Castiel had never been like the other angels.


End file.
